Saturday, 3 October 2015

Keep Your Crowbar Handy

Front Cover

Synopsis

Jake O'Connor has problems. His time spent overseas with Britain's SAS Regiment still gives him nightmares, his social life is in the toilet, and his best friend is an unrepentant adrenaline junkie.

Unfortunately, just as things finally seem to go his way, decomposing corpses of the recently dead begin rising to gnaw on the living. Soon the streets are glutted with mindless creatures hungering for only one thing: human flesh. Jake's unlikely group of friends needs to make tracks for some kind of refuge before they end up as Hors d'oeuvres, but how to do that without being turned into drooling maggot-heads themselves?

Now, a burned out combat journalist, a self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie, a health food store owner, and a ditzy pharmacy tech, have to hold their own against legions of walking corpses. At first glance, none of them are likely candidates to survive for long in The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. But hey, stranger things have happened.

Psychopaths, escaped criminals, and para-military white supremacists all stand in their way, not to mention the ever-increasing, zombie hordes. If Jake doesn't want to become one of the shambling dead he'll need to keep his whits about him, and his crowbar handy.

KEEP YOUR CROWBAR HANDY drops the reader headlong into a frightening (yet sometimes comedic) zombie apocalypse, literally with a bang. S.P. Durnin captures the craziness of it all by focusing on an unlikely group of potential survivors as they attempt to work together dispite some rather odd personality quirks, not drive each other crazy, and try to stay alive in a world now overrun by the hungry dead. The author combines tongue-in-cheek humor with a healthy dose of gore-soaked apocalyptic adventure, and proves that love doesn't always conquer all. Sometimes, you gotta use a crowbar...

Review

An unusual title and a nice looking cover made me take a chance on this post zombie apocalypse book.The main characer is Jake O'Connor. He's a war journalist who spent some time with the SAS before he returned home to America.There are two other main characters. Kat and Laura, one is a Japanese beauty and the other is an Irish beauty. Both women are kick-ass, and have no problem wielding swords (katana's) or guns - in fact every single person in the book seems to be an expert at whatever weapon they have at their disposal.The storyline is like most zombie books, and so I wasn't expecting anything new. Jake is the leader of his ever expanding group, as they try to find safety in flesh-eating world. They battle against zombies as well as fellow humans. But what did surprise me was the bizarreness of some of the plot lines, or should I say characters. For example;You got Kat, who before the apocalypse worked as a pharmacy clerk, but afterwards suddenly becomes a samurai/ninja/Ronda Rousey clone.You also have Jake's war veteran buddy, George who conveniently has a panic 'room' - which comprises of 3 floors, several bedrooms, numerous showers, kitchen, a gym, an arsenal equipped with all manner of weapons and lastly of course food to last several months. Every woman in the book seems to be Miss World contestant and the book spends more time analysing who's sleeping with who that I wondered at some point whether the zombies were a figment of my imagination, or had they naturally died off whilst the characters finally make up their minds who they wanted to have sex with.Jake, wasn't someone I particularly liked. His personality didn't endear me to him. I mean one minute he was absolutely steadfast in his loyalty to Laura and the next he had his tongue rammed down Kat's throat. He also had a propensity to keep going about how great he was because he spent some time with the SAS (as a journalist) - which to be fair he really was, as the author made him into a younger Clint Eastwood, who excelled at everything, with everyone idolising him, only to be broken up with odd moments of self-pity at having to be the leader of their gang.

The funny thing is that this book isn't half as terrible as it sounds, and I did enjoy some of the quirky storylines. But then again I'm a male, who has no problem reading about how every woman is a Victoria's Secret Angel. The story really is every young heterosexual man's dream, of course, minus the flesh eating zombies, but then again they don't feature that much anyway.

Conclusion

For hardcore zombie lovers, you might want to steer clear of this book. But for those of you who want to read something that will bring a smile to your face, mostly from sheer amusement at the oddness of it all, then give this a read.